Joshna Maharaj

Six months after she left university, armed with a degree in religious studies and zero clue what to do with it, Joshna Maharaj was far from her Toronto home, in the Indian mountains, helping an ashram prepare its New Year’s Eve feast. The pots were big enough for her to sit in; she used a smaller pot to scoop out curry and daal. “We fed a thousand people,” Maharaj remembers. “No one got turned away.” She returned from the ashram in 2001, newly committed to using her cooking skills to further social change and equally certain there was no room in the restaurant industry for “my soft, spiritual, emotional female bullshit.” So Maharaj carved out room for herself, shaping a career around the notion that people in vulnerable situations do not forfeit their right to tasty, nourishing food.

She spent nearly f ive years as the chef at The Stop Community Food Centre, making lunches out of donated groceries. “The Stop has a really strong philosophy that our meals and service need to maintain people’s dignity,” she says. “Whatever I could make from scratch, I would.” That philosophy has guided Maharaj’s work ever since. After The Stop, she ran the kitchen at a Scarborough hospital, where she ensured her team cooked with fresh, local ingredients, then overhauled Ryerson University’s food program, introducing affordable lunches. For her next challenge, Maharaj is setting her sights on penitentiaries. “It makes sense that chefs would play a role in rebuilding institutions,” she says. “We have a responsibility to address the issues happening with our food system.”